Electronic mail (or "e-mail") is becoming a popular way for people to communicate. Using e-mail, a person can send messages and other information (such as pictures, sound recordings, formatted documents, etc. that are in digital form) electronically to other e-mail users.
E-mail communication systems are generally regarded as multi-cast store-and-forward bi-directional communication systems. A user can send e-mail messages to one or more recipients at a time. An e-mail system is regarded as bi-directional as, usually, a user can both send and receive e-mail messages.
When using e-mail to communicate, a user will typically create a message using an e-mail program running on a computer that is or can be connected by a network to other computers. The message will include the e-mail address of the intended recipient. When the user has finished entering the message, the user will "send" the message to the intended recipient--the message is electronically transmitted via the computer network. The recipient, also using an e-mail program running on a computer connected to the computer network, can then read the received message.
A common computer network used to send and receive e-mail is the Internet. The Internet allows users to send and receive e-mail to and from computers around the world.
Typically, each user will have an Internet e-mail address unique to that user, e.g., bob@pto.com. A user with an e-mail account and a computer that can connect to the Internet can easily send and receive e-mail over the Internet.
There are a number of ways that a user can connect to the Internet to send and receive e-mail. A user can have an account with a proprietary on-line network, such as, for example, Prodigy, America Online, CompuServe or Microsoft Network. Using a computer with a modem, the user dials up the on-line network's access number and connects to the on-line network. The user can then send and receive e-mail to and from other users of the on-line network and, provided that the on-line network is connected to the Internet, with those having an Internet e-mail address. An alternative method to connect with the Internet is via an Internet Service Provider. Using a modem, the user dials the access number of the Internet Service Provider, and establishes a connection with a computer "directly" connected to or part of the Internet. The user can then operate an e-mail program, such as Eudora, to send and receive e-mail over the Internet.
In many existing systems, users read and write e-mail while on-line, i.e., while connected to the on-line network or the Internet Service Provider. Costs of operating the on-line network (including communication and hardware costs) are higher when users are connected to the network. Also, some on-line networks and Internet Access Providers charge per minute of connect time. Accordingly, it is more cost effective if users read and write e-mail messages when off-line (e.g., when not connected to the on-line network).
Some existing on-line services display additional content to users. For example, advertisements are shown on part of the screen to users of the America Online network. When accessing certain World Wide Web sites on the Internet, advertisements are often included as part of the web page seen by the user. Often in such systems, each user accessing a certain screen or site is shown the same advertisement. Sophisticated systems have the capability to change the advertisement after a certain period of time. However, in such systems the user must remain connected to the network to see the replacement advertisement.
When using a browser program (such as Netscape's Navigator program) to access pages on the World Wide Web, information, which may include additional content such as advertisements, may be downloaded and cached at a user's computer. This information can be flushed from the cache at a later time, as determined by the browser program. In some cases, this information may be flushed when the browser program is "off-line." However, additional content such as an advertisement is not automatically replaced in a web page and new, unseen content is not displayed as part of a web page when in such disconnected mode.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system that displays and automatically replaces additional content while disconnected from the network. In particular, there is a need for an e-mail system that operates mostly off-line and that can display and automatically replace additional content while off-line.
Suppliers of additional content, such as advertisers, find it desirable to target content to relevant potential customers. For example, an advertiser of stockings would prefer to target women rather than men with its advertising. A Boston restaurant would prefer to target residents of Boston and business travelers rather than children living in San Francisco. Moreover, advertisers prefer to pay for advertising based upon the number of relevant consumers who are actually exposed to the advertisement. For prior on-line systems and networks, including the World Wide Web, it is often difficult for an advertiser to precisely determine whether its advertisements were actually viewed by a user and for how long, and whether the advertisement induced a response. Accordingly, there exists a need for a targeted system that also can provide information as to the characteristics of those who were exposed to the additional content, for how long the user was exposed, and at what times.
Existing e-mail systems have other disadvantages. In existing dial-up e-mail systems, a user is provided with an access telephone number to connect to the network. Typically, at the network there are a number of mail servers and each user's received e-mail messages are stored on one of those mail servers. Because many users use the same access number to connect to the network, the network requires capabilities to switch users to the mail server that stores that user's e-mail. Existing e-mail networks determine at the server side and while the user is on-line who the user is and that user's mail server, and then switch the user to that mail server--a time consuming operation, especially if there are many users accessing the network. There exists a need for an e-mail system where the network does not have to decide, as part of the switching process, which mail server is to be accessed by each user.
The present invention addresses problems that may arise when an advocacy group wants to have a number of people contact a representative, government official or entity, such as a particular elected representative. As used herein, an advocacy group may represent any person or group of people who want to send information about an issue to the public. The advocacy group may, for example, encourage a large number of people to contact a particular congressperson about an upcoming vote. It should be noted that the term advocacy group is not limited to groups committed to influencing particular legislative votes, but may include, by way of example, groups interested in administrate rule-making, public referendums, petitions, and other actions associated with issue advocacy.
By way of example, a member of the public traditionally contacts a representative by writing a letter or by making a telephone call. Today, the use of e-mail messages for this purpose is increasingly common. In either case, however, a person is often not aware of important issues that may be affected by legislative (or other) action, when a vote might be scheduled that concerns a particular issue, who his or her representative is, how to contact the representative or whether the representative serves on a particular committee. Moreover, a person may not have time to find out this information, or the time to compose a detailed message about an issue.
To make it easier for a person to contact a representative, an advocacy group can set up an advocacy Web page. Generally, a person that visits such a Web page is asked to provide a name and address that is used to automatically create and send an e-mail message to that person's representative, such as an elected representative. The person's address may be used, for example, to select one or more representatives associated with that person (such as by correlating a ZIP code with a congressional district) and to sign the e-mail message with that address (so that the representative will understand that a constituent is sending the e-mail message). With this approach, however, only a limited group of people, already interested in the issue, will likely access the Web page--and those people may already be fully informed about an upcoming vote and/or how to contact their representative. In other words, an advocacy group may prefer to "push" information to the public as opposed to "pulling" the public to the information.
Additionally, many people are not comfortable sending a name and address through a public communications network such as the Internet. In general, requesting detailed information will simply reduce the effectiveness, i.e. lower the response rate, of an advocacy Web page.
Moreover, an advocacy group may want to reach a group of people having particular geographic, demographic and/or psychographic characteristics. The advocacy group may also want to receive contact information about such people or to receive answers to survey questions from such people. In addition, the advocacy group may want to receive a summary, or report, about a group's response to a particular advocacy message. The advocacy group may also want to test a number of different messages about an issue, and to compare the result (such as the response rate) of various styles or arguments.